1922 - ROBIN HOOD, a spectacular film from Douglas Fairbanks.

An action adventure film from the man who invented the action hero, Douglas Fairbanks.  The film is in many ways an attempt to out do his previous action films, The Mark of Zorro and The Three Musketeers. 

The story of Robin Hood is told on an amazingly larger than life level.  Gigantic sets were built and then augmented with special effects to make them completely dwarf the actors.  It looks like hundreds it not thousands of extras were employed for the crowd scenes.

Douglas Fairbanks was known for doing a lot of his own stunts and this film is not an exception.  Fairbanks was a superb athlete and many of the action scenes were clearly thought out and executed by Fairbanks himself.

 

The director of Robin Hood was Allan Dwan but the real driving force and creative person in this film is Fairbanks himself.  Not only was Douglas Fairbanks the producer who had complete control of the film, he also wrote the screenplay.

 

Robin Hood is an entertaining and important film in the Hollywood film cannon.  It made Fairbanks a lot of money.

Written by Douglas Fairbanks, the running time is 127 minuets.

1922 - THE LOVES OF PHARAOH aka The Wife of the Pharaoh

One of the most important directors in early film history.  Ernest Lubitsch started out in silent films in Germany and made the transition to sound films in the United States until his death from a heart attack.  Lubitisch is chiefly remembered as a director who was good with intimate stories of love and romance.  But for whatever reason, probably just to show he could do it, he made a few epic films.  The Loves of Pharaoh is one of these.

The film stars one of the biggest stars in silent cinema Emil Jannings.  He was big stuff for a while until World War II when he starred in a lot of propaganda films for the Nazis during the war.  This didn't really work out very well for him.  After the war he was finished in the film business due to his association with the Nazi party.

 

Well anyway Jannings plays the Pharaoh of Egypt who happens to fall in love with a slave girl and all hell breaks lose as only it can in one of these larger than life stories.  This story was shot on a massive production level with huge sets and large scale battle scenes.  The film is well staged by Lubitsch who for a man who preferred to make more intimate stories did a very good job on this larger than life story.  The Loves of Pharaoh is certainly worth a look for the production values and battle scenes alone.

The film was written by Norbert Falk and Hanns Kräly.  The film exists on YouTube in a very good copy.  The running time is 100 minutes.

1922 - GRANDMA'S BOY, silent classic from Harold Lloyd

A perfect silent comedy from Harold Lloyd.  Harold plays a coward who can't get the girl and is pushed around by his rival for her affections.  His Grandmother gives him a lucky idol to give him courage.

Harold Lloyd was one of the true masters of comedy and Grandma's Boy is about as good as it gets for a silent comedy.  Lloyd and his team carefully create their characters and make sure to integrate them into the comedic situations. 

There isn't an ounce of padding in this film.  It moves along briskly and ends an hour later, something comedies today have not even begun to figure out.

This is an extremely well made and impressive film. 

60 minutes.

1922 MANSLAUGHTER - More outrageous DeMille Sex and Sin stuff.

Cecil B DeMille and his writer/mistresses Jeannie MacPherson put together an "everything but the kitchen sink" story for this film.  A rich, shallow woman  accidentally kills a cop and ends up going to prison. Prison life redeems her and turns her into a good church going Christian.  The synopsis can't even begin to cover the amount of plot and melodramatic situations DeMille crammed into an hour and forty minutes.

The silent films of DeMille are generally considered his artistic peak.  This film isn't up to the silent version of The 10 Commandments that I saw but it is certainly a lot of fun with never a dull moment in any of it.

 

Just to give you the idea of the bizzaro nature of this film, DeMille, includes two ancient Roman orgy sequences which have absolutely nothing to do with anything in the film.  These scenes appear to have been included just as an indulgent whim.  One of the orgy scenes, has a couple of lesbians making out in plain view of the camera which is  pretty amazing stuff for 1922.

DeMille was frequently criticized for the poor handling of actors in his films but his star Leatrice Joy,  does a very good job going from playing a spoiled partying playgirl to a born again Christian.

Obviously Leatrice Joy is more fun to watch being naughty than nice.  She did a lot of her own  driving during the car chase scenes.   DeMillle was a big believer in actors doing their own stunts even if it meant risking their lives at times.  


Cecil B. DeMille, was criticized for being somewhat of a right wing moralizing hypocrite throughout his career but he certainly understood how to mix dirtiness with piety, something a lot of Christians are still very adept at.

In DeMille's case his moralizing is extremely entertaining in this film.